(Note to readers: I’m going to try to move this novel in progress entirely to this site. I am not sure how long it will take for me to resume progress on this experiment or if I will even complete this work posting it online as I go. But for those of you who have read it so far, thanks, and thanks as well to those of you who choose to read it now.
(To add to the confusion, I’m posting some pages separately on this site and I have a problem in that due to the mysteries of the computer it seems to want to display much of it in small type, but you can adjust the view on your toolbar to larger type, I believe. As I suggested on the other site, if you’re really commited to reading this, printing it out is probably the way to go.)
(copyright)
Tuleville (Tooleyville) Sundown
By Tony Walther
The railroad tracks stretched into the flat horizon with heavy heat lines crossing over them. A faint bright light could be seen in the distance. The light gradually became larger and still larger, until it was noticeably the headlamp of a locomotive.
Traffic was lined up on both sides of the tracks north of Tuleville as the wig wag red signals flashed their warning.
And as the Southern Pacific Daylight entered the Tuleville depot, little tractors pulling wagons made their way to the tracks in anticipation of loading and unloading baggage.
A black porter stepped off the train and placed a step stool at the bottom of a train door.
Four passengers descended the steps, a teenaged girl dressed in sweater and skirt, a younger boy, dressed in slacks and a light jacket, a woman wearing a coat and long white gloves and a hat with a little half veil, and at the woman’s right hand, a little boy in a city kid outfit, a coat with short pants and sporty cap.
They all looked out of place in the farm town of Tuleville on what was a hot July day in California’s Central Valley. And the expressions on their faces indicated they felt somewhat dazed.
As they were arriving, a 1953 Studebaker pulled into the train depot parking lot. Out stepped a dapper man, with hat cocked just so, wearing a coat and tie.
The dazed look of the faces of the new arrivals turned to smiles of happiness and relief as they saw the father of the family coming to meet them.
“I see you all made it. Welcome to Tuleville.”
“My, it sure is warm here,” the woman noted, her smile turning down just slightly.
“Yes,” responded the man. “I forgot how hot it gets here in the Valley,” he added almost apologetically.
When the family arrived at their new residence, the moving men were already there, hard at work.
And that evening, the transplanted former residents of San Francisco sat around their familiar oblong formica dinner table, except for the mother, who was wearing an apron and carrying a pitcher of milk to the table. The father was still wearing his suit, minus the coat. The daughter was wearing a white blouse and skirt. The older boy was now wearing a T-shirt with horizontal stripes, and the little boy was wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans rolled up at the cuffs.
“Did you get them to raise your salary above $70 per week,” the mother, now seated at the table, asked.
“Well no, but I am going to be doing some extra work to make up for that,” the father answered in a low and manly, but not-so-confident tone.
“And you’re still supposed to work five and a half days a week, with split days off?” she responded in a tone that was civil but that revealed some disgust.
The father now had a faint smile on his face. “It’s not what I would have preferred, but I don’t seem to have much of a choice.”
Meanwhile, the daughter looked over at her little brother and stuck her tongue out.”She’s sticking her tongue out at me!,” the little boy screamed out, pointing to his sister.
She in turn displayed an expression of utter innocence.
“Not this again,” the older boy remarked dryly.
The incident faded and light family discussion ensued.
Seeing a chance to get in on the conversation, the little boy addressed his father. “You said we were moving to the country. Is this the country?”
“We’re right across the street from the country,” he answered good -naturedly.
The family’s new residence was an older home with tall trees around it. Nearby on the same side of the street was a relatively new tract of homes. There was also a large plot of dry dusty dirt that was destined to be a new housing tract. But as the father had told his young son, across the street was the country, that is rural farmland. Directly across the street from their new residence was a low brick wall, broken by a driveway. Set back from that was an old, but well kept farm house and a barn and corrals and a wide expanse of open land, most of which was planted to alfalfa.
One evening, several days after moving in, the father and the two boys were out back in a garden spot he had created with a shovel and a rake. He had previously wetted the ground with a sprinkler.
The older boy used an old wooden broom handle to poke little holes in the moist dirt. Following his brother, the little boy crawled along on his hands and knees, popping corn seeds into each hole. Meanwhile, the father, now dressed in khaki pants and a Hawaiian shirt and a panama hat, worked along a wire netting fence, chopping at weeds with a shovel.
Looking over the fence one could now see the sun, a giant orangish ball, setting in the west.
So, the family, composed of the father, Pierre Labrew, and his wife Marjorie, and their children, from oldest to youngest, Marie, Remy, and Jack, had now settled into their new home far away from the City.
….The local newspaper was the Tuleville Times, housed in a long rectangular one-story building on the north edge of Main Street. Directly across the street was an alleyway, with the Tuleville Cafe
on one side and Joe’s liquors on the other side.On this July morning, a short man with wire-rimmed glasses and buck teeth came rushing out the front doors of the Tuleville Times. He was wearing baggy pants and his suit coat was wide open. He was carrying a coffee cup in his outstretched hand as if it were leading the way. He ran across the street.
He pushed open the swinging doors of the coffee shop and asked, “what’s new?”
“You’re the news man, why don’t you tell us,? ” said the man behind the lunch counter doing some breakfast dishes in the sink.
“Hey Scoop, the circus is coming to town,” said an old man sitting at a stool at the counter.
“Yep, I’m sure all the children are excited about that,” Scoop replied.
“My brother Pete the railroad engineer told me he’s bringing up the train from LA that’s hauling all the circus animals. That’s sure goona be a sight to see,” the old man said.
Scoop, who had just put his coffee cup on the counter, looked intrigued. “Well, I didn’t know they were bringing the animals in on a train. I thought they’d be hauling them in by trucks.”
“Oh yeah,” said the old man. “I remember back before the war when I was living up in Raisin City a circus train came to town and a lion got loose during the night. No one even knew anything about it till the morning. Some lady went out on her front porch to pick up her milk delivery and came face the face with the biggest cat she ever saw. But I guess the lion took one look at her in her house coat and curlers and got scared and ran away.”"I think I know the feeling,” said the man behind the counter.
“So, when is this train coming in?” Scoop asked.
“It’s comin in this evening about six, Pete told me,” said the old man.
Scoop grabbed his coffee cup that had just been filled by the man behind the counter. “Got to go. I’ve got a paper to make up,” said Scoop.
As he rushed out the front door, the man behind the counter yelled after him, “I’ll let you know what the news is once my Raisin City Gazette gets here.” Scoop didn’t acknowledge the remark, but he heard it. As he rushed across the street with his coffee cup leading his way, he mulled over the remark. Everyone in Tuleville it seemed thought that all the real news was in the bigger city’s newspaper. The Raisin City Gazette was a much bigger paper, but in reality it covered very little of the Tuleville news, but it did have a local stringer who seemed to always be at the scene of the big stories when they did occur. Wasn’t he there when the Tuleville Lumber Co. burned to the ground last year? He got a picture with flames leaping into the air and filed a story with lively quotes from the fire chief and the owner of the local landmark. The Tuleville Times had to settle for next-day photos of cold ashes and a rehash story of what everyone could read in the Raisin City Gazette. Scoop was born back east and had majored in journalism. But now solidly into middle age, he knew he had risen as high as he would ever go, a second banana editor on a small town newspaper.
Scoop entered the newsroom at a run, and as he brushed past the desk of his new photographer-reporter, Pierre Labrew, he said: “I’m going to need you to stay late this afternoon. The circus train is coming in at six and we need to get some good photos for tomorrow’s paper.”
Pierre, who was typing out a caption for the day’s front page shot, Miss July, also the Alfalfa Growers Queen, who was standing, appropriately, in a field of blooming alfalfa, nodded his head. Pierre had worked at much bigger papers and even the news wire service, but for some unknown reason, unknown to even him, he had gone back to the valley of his childhood. He’d been a reporter, photographer, and wire service editor. He covered the first meeting of the United Nations in San Francisco. Now he was doing things like making pictures of the monthly calendar girl for the Tuleville Times.
That evening, Scoop and Pierre went over to the train depot in their respective cars, Pierre in his Studebaker and Scoop in his Desoto. The circus train had arrived. There was a makeshift corral at the side of what looked like a cattle car. None other than the King of Beasts, a lion, fluffy main and all, was roaming around. Holding court was a circus ringmaster with a top hat and coat with tails. A clown with a big red nose, tufts of read hair at the sides of his head and some oversized shoes, was making his rounds, accompanied by a pack of monkeys. Pierre made a few photos with his speed graphic, a big box of a camera with cumbersome plates that had to be slid in and out for each photo. Scoop looked around, sizing things up. A lot of town’s folk had gathered around.
How could this thing best be used for tomorrow’s newspaper? That was the thought on Scoop Redford’s mind. His eyes darted back and forth to see if that pesky Raisin City Gazette stringer was anywhere around. No sign of him. Good.
In less than thirty minutes the show was over, and the animals were put back on the train. Pierre was talking to the ringmaster, taking some notes. Scoop hung back. He went to the other side of the train. Later he came back around and told Pierre: “You might as well write up a little story, but don’t stay at the office too late. I’ll need you bright and early tomorrow morning.”
Pierre worked in the dark, carefully handling the film plates, processing them in the darkroom. After he turned the lights back on, he hung the film up to dry. He went back to the news room and sat at a desk where he spread out his notes. He banged out a story on the manual royal typewriter.
Pierre was an editor for Associated Press in San Francisco, but he was stuck on permanent night shift. Any hope of getting on day shift had been dashed when the correspondents came home from the war. As a reward for their sacrifices, they were offered the choice day slots.
He had been a reporter on a newspaper in El Paso, Texas back in the 30s. He dabbled in news photography and became their first staff photographer. So now he had reached back into a former skill to get a job away from the doldrums of being a night shift editor at the wire service in downtown San Francisco and day sleeping. He thought maybe he’d start a new life in the valley of his youth. Maybe he’d open up his own photographic studio. Perhaps he’d buy a little farm. He had grown up on one. But for now he would do his job with the highest professionalism he could, a level of professionalism that had always guaranteed him a job, if not happiness. No, here he was not happy, and he had to take a substantial pay cut. He really didn’t know what he wanted, but he was still looking at fifty years old.
He went back to the darkroom and took the dried film off the rack and slid it into the enlarger to make up an array of prints from which the editor could choose in the morning. He’d put in two extra hours of work for which he would not be paid.
“Well, here you are. We already ate dinner,” was the cool greeting delivered by Marjorie Labrew when Pierre arrived home. She reheated some dinner for him. The children were in the living room watching television. Little Jack and his older brother were prone on the floor with their chins resting on their hands. Their sister, Marie, was curled up on a strange chair that looked like a giant Chinese straw hat turned upside down. The furniture was sparse in the Labrew household. They had a couch with hideaway bed, the funny chair and another chair that looked like it belonged out on the lawn.
After awhile, little Jack wandered into the kitchen and said: “Where ya been Pierre?” He addressed his father by his first name because that’s what his sister and brother did, and no one was sure why.
“Oh, the straw boss had me work late at the salt mine,” Pierre answered. Marjorie smiled sardonically.
“Do you like to work?” asked little Jack.
“I don’t like to work for other people.”
“Then why do you work for them?”
“Someone has to pay for the house and food.”
“Could you work for yourself?”
“I wished I could, but that’s not possible right now.”
Marjorie left the table, shaking her head. She’d heard it all before. She went back to the sink to finish the dishes.
It was a hot sweaty night. The house had no air conditioning, save a swamp cooler that was all but useless and that was turned off after everyone went to bed.
……. Early in the morning Scoop Redford’s Desoto moved slowly down the street near the railroad tracks. It stopped and out came Scoop. He looked around furtively. He walked over to the circus train. Shortly, he came back to his car and drove off to the newspaper office.
Sometime later, Tony Consiglio, proprietor of Tony’s Market, an old time corner grocery store, was arranging his daily outside display of fruits and vegetables. Having completed the chore, he took a deep breath of the fresh air in the only relatively cool part of what would surly be another scorcher. At least he had a nice striped awning at the entrance of his little market. He went back into the store. Not five minutes later he heard a racket outside. It was as if something was screeching and it also sounded like his displays were being knocked over. He rushed outside. A monkey was peeling one of his bananas. Another monkey was sampling an orange, and still another had tipped over a bushel of apples.
“Hey whatsa happenin here!?” the startled grocer yelled out.
The troupe of monkeys ran off, carrying some of the fruit with them. But they only retreated a short distance, screeching back as if to mock him.
Pierre was sound asleep before the telephone rang. He stumbled to the kitchen and picked up the receiver from the conical-shaped rotary dial phone.
“Hey Pierre, this is Scoop. Get down to Tony’s Market as quick as you can with your camera. There’s a lot of monkey business going on down there!”
The photo with a monkey eating a banana and Tony in the background throwing up his hands in stereotypical Italian grocer fashion appeared on the front page of the afternoon Tuleville Times. Tony had gladly cooperated with Pierre for photos. He was happy to get the free advertising for his market, although he didn’t care for Scoop Redford’s accompanying headline over the photo:‘Yes we have no bananas today’
The monkeys were back in their cages on the circus train by the time the Raisin City Gazette stringer arrived on the scene. His editor didn’t even use the story he filed about the incident.
The circus folks, who might have been concerned about how their monkeys got out, were relieved that the local authorities were not mad and were overjoyed about the free publicity for their show that evening. They sent a number of free tickets to the newspaper.
For that reason, Pierre’s family got to go to the circus.
Pierre took some requisite photos, but was able to sit and watch most of the show with his family. Try as he did, little Jack could not get his father to buy any of the many doodads hawkers were selling in the stands, especially not that little toy monkey contraption they were selling. He wouldn’t even buy peanuts. It was then that little Jack first became aware of the fact that his folks were frugal, even if that word was not yet in his vocabulary. But the family did enjoy the show.
…..It was August with September and the start of school just around the corner when the Labrew children trekked down to the local elementary school to see what it was like. They walked across the dusty field that separated their home from the rest of the neighborhood. Then they walked down the streets of the older westside neighborhood with its hodgepodge of wooden Victorians, brick houses, bungalows, and shanties. Many of the houses had front porch swings. Some had chicken coops in the backyards. This was on the west side of the tracks, generally thought of as the poor side of town.
Little Jack was barefoot. He owned shoes, but little boys often went barefoot in this environment. It was another sweltering hot day. The pavement was getting too hot for his feet. He began to walk on a stretch of the street where there was no sidewalk, just dirt. But now he caught a prickly seed of a puncture vine in his foot and let out a yelp.
“Why did we bring him along,” Marie said, with a little laugh of mock disgust. Remy tended to his little brother’s foot with some show of concern. The recorded melody of an ice cream truck was heard. Suddenly children came out from everywhere yelling and screaming. The driver stopped, got out, and walked to the back of his little truck and opened the rear door to reveal an assortment of popsicles and ice cream bars and ice cream sandwiches. Little kids were carrying change in their hands, reaching into their jeans or begging their mothers for money.
This was all new to the San Francisco-raised Labrew children. Fortunately, Remy found some change in his pockets, saved up from his 15-cent per week allowance, and bought popsicles for himself and his brother and sister. Little Jack quickly forgot about his punctured foot, but he did have to do a lot of hopping around on the hot pavement, taking advantage of the few shade trees on the block, as they continued their journey to the school.
They found the typical valley school with the long one story buildings, laid out side by side with open concrete corridors. Looking out of place amid the modern buildings were several wooden clapboard bungalows. They were former World War II barracks buildings moved in from a since abandoned air field. Local schools were dealing with a ballooning enrollment, thanks to the post war baby boom.
The large grass covered playground had swing sets, a jungle gym, and most intriguing of all to little Jack, an old tree trunk on its side, set in a sandbox. He started to run over to it, but Remy told him to wait, that they wanted to look at the school itself before using the playground. Marie was ahead of them and had reached one of the concrete corridors.
“Uggg, this is disgusting!,” she said.
Coming up to her, Remy and Jack saw what she was talking about. There was a large dried turd on the pavement.
“That must have been some big dog!” Remy exclaimed.
“That’s not a dog turd. That was left by a human,” Marie stated in her usual authoritative manner.
Remy looked puzzled. “A person wouldn’t go to the bathroom on the sidewalk, would they?”
Oh, I think it was probably one of those colored kids from over there,” Marie answered, pointing over to a section of shacks that bordered on one side of the school. They formed one edge of Tuleville’s colored town. As she said this, her nose turned up slightly. Remy looked around with a somewhat doubtful look on his face.
Meanwhile, little Jack surveyed the offending piece of matter from all angles, avoiding too close of an approach.
Later that afternoon, after returning home, the Labrew children met Martin de Voss, who lived on the farm across the road.
He was tall, toe headed, and broad shouldered, wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans, rolled up in short cuffs at the bottom. He had a big smile on his face. At first glance, though, it was hard to tell if he was friendly or slightly menacing.
“My dad wonders why you folks are raisin a garden. You can get all the food you need at the store, and besides if everyone raised their own garden farmers would be out of business.”
Remy was caught off guard by the assertion and just stood there looking puzzled. Little Jack felt threatened. Martin de Voss looked huge and menacing to him now. Marie gave him a serious stare and then spoke:
“My father has a right to grow food for his family if he wants to! It’s his business, not yours!”
“Hey, I didn’t mean any harm. I was just trying to get acquainted. My dad’s always saying things. He doesn’t really mean anything by it.”
So, after the initial shock, the Labrew children found that they had a new friend. While the Labrew children were spaced four years apart each and didn’t usually play together, on this day with nothing else to do and being new to Tuleville, they did. They played tag. They played army. And the last thing they played was making believe that they were in Hawaii. At the time, there was a popular television program called the “Harry Owens Show.” The host played the steel guitar out under the palm trees.
Martin de Voss got the idea of dressing little Jack up like a hula dancer. There was an abundant growth of Johnson grass around the septic tank. Marie and Remy and Martin de Voss pulled out clumps of the weeds with big chunks of moist dirt holding together the Johnson grass roots and proceeded to stuff them into the shorts little Jack was wearing. Once done, little Jack did a hula hula dance, much to the delight of the others. He got such a good reaction that he ran into the house to show his mother.
As soon as Marjorie Labrew turned around she saw her little boy do the hula hula dance, mud dropping all over her just-mopped floor.
Little Jack was shocked that instead of a rave review, what he heard was a gasp and a groan from his mother, who quickly scooped him up and took him out to the service porch, stripped off his clothes, and placed him into one of the double wash trays, filling it with warm, almost hot, water.
“I can’t believe that you’d do such a thing!” she scolded.
Meanwhile, outside, the others had taken a break from their play and were sitting under an oak tree. Martin de Voss was telling Remy and Marie that he used to have a little brother like Jack.
“I sure miss him and I hope he’s not looking down at me from heaven and still mad at how I teased him.”
“What happened to him?” asked Remy.
“He drowned in the canal last year. It was hot like today and he jumped in. He knew how to swim, but he couldn’t get back out cause the cement bank was too slippery. There was no one around. He used to swim with me on our farm, but our ditch has a dirt bank and you can grab onto the dirt and weeds. But he was on his way home from a friend’s house when he jumped in by hisself.”
The other two didn’t know quite what to say. It was so sad. Finally they both said they were sorry.
“Oh, I’m getting over it. I know nothing will bring him back and that he is in heaven. My dad’s never going to get over it, though, I don’t think. But anyway, you guys be careful. Don’t try to swim in the canals. My dad won’t even let me swim in the ones on our farm anymore. They got a public pool here. Get your folks to take you there.”
